School wins fight to keep lollipop lady
on dangerous road

Children at Northiam Primary School will have a lollipop lady next year after the village rallied around to come up with funding.

The crossing patrol outside the school, on the busy A28 road, was one of 11 across the county to be axed by East Sussex County Council as part of cost saving measures.

Northiam’s lollipop lady Pat Brabon has been doing the job for the past 35 years.

She said: “I really do see the need for a crossing, whether it is me or someone else doing it.”

Northiam School head Matthew Montebello launched an appeal earlier this year in a bid to come up with the £3,700 needed to provide the crossing patrol.

He said: “I am delighted to say that thanks to a vert generous response from the village we have now raised enough funds to allow Mrs Brabon to continue in her role as lollipop lady next year.

“Our special thanks go to AHS Ltd; The Spar Shop; Jempsons; the parish council; Mr and Mrs Hinds and Mr and Mrs Swainbank.

“Their generosity is very much appreciated by everyone at the school including staff, children and parents.

“The Friends of Northiam School and the parish council continue to search for a long term solution to enable Mrs Brabon to carry on her important work beyond July 2015.”

Commenting on the crossing cuts, the county council said it had to “make very difficult decisions” and that it was “simply not feasible to continue to fund crossing patrols which do not meet nationally accepted criteria based on the number of cars and the number of pupils crossing the road.”

But critics of the cuts, including two schools which have been affected in Bexhill, say the safety of school children should take priority over savings.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Rye and Battle Observer provides news, events and sport features from the Rye area. For the best up to date information relating to Rye and the surrounding areas visit us at Rye and Battle Observer regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Rye and Battle Observer requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.